


Rhapsody

by engagemythrusters



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Friendship, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25369762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engagemythrusters/pseuds/engagemythrusters
Summary: "For so long, Jack had been alone, and now he was terrified of the thought. He couldn't be alone anymore."
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 9
Kudos: 97





	Rhapsody

**Author's Note:**

> This sat waiting to be posted for three months... oops...

Gwen's hands were decidedly a lot smaller than Jack's. They could easily fit in his larger ones, but that meant nothing about their gentleness or roughness. Gwen's hands could easily fire a gun and then punch a man's nose 'til it broke. Just as easily as they could, say, clean the blood off of someone's hands with complete tenderness.

Jack stared at the floor as Gwen worked at the blood caked beneath his fingernails. He tried to make sense of the bizarre design on the linoleum, but it had no logical flow. Every new white square refused to line up with the last, creating a mosaic of broken patterns and jagged shapes. Jack followed the lines, up and down, jumping whenever they stopped at the end of a tile, finding the next closest line. He wasn't sure why he did it. Just something to pass the time, he supposed.

He didn't know how long they would be here for. Nobody had given the pair of them an estimate. He didn't want to think about what that implied.

Gwen manipulated his fingers, trying to find a position where she could effectively wipe the blood from each finger. Jack blinked at his hand, and then back away.

She'd borrowed the pack of wet wipes from a young mother, if Jack remembered correctly. He might not. He hadn't exactly been watching. 

His arm was loose and pliable, so she could easily flip his wrist over to get his palm. He looked at her hands against his again. Hers were only faintly tinged pink, residual from the wipes and from holding Jack's hand in her own. He watched the hand with the wipe work methodically up and down his palm, swiping from the heel to his fingertips in swift and soft strokes. 

He looked up at Gwen's face at one point. Her lips were pursed together, her brow was knitted to a frown, and she blinked rapidly from time to time, rather obviously holding back tears of her own. Jack thought she had never looked more humanly beautiful than she did when she cried. It might look messy and ugly and snotty, but it was _human_. And that was so devastatingly beautiful that he had to admire it. Ianto could get the same way, sometimes. 

Jack shifted in his seat, rolling his shoulders back, stacking his neck properly. He stared at the opposite wall of the waiting room.

He lost himself that way for a few minutes, in a haze of emptiness that felt so wrong and yet comforting that it terrified him. That was an emptiness and a numbness that overcame all emotions. Jack thrived in that lack of emotion for years, before he met Ianto. He didn't want to go back.

"I don't know how to fix this," Gwen whispered.

Her voice broke, but only a little at the end, and Jack glanced back down at her. She pulled at the sleeve of Jack's greatcoat in reply. He noted the blood that had seeped upwards into the fabric.

"Ianto..." She pressed her lips together tightly for a moment. "Ianto would."

She didn't say "does," which stabbed Jack through the heart, but she also didn't say "did," which patched the damage as quickly as it came. 

"I don't think it'll come out with wet wipes," she murmured.

She tugged the sleeve again, this time to seemingly fix it around Jack's wrist. Then she gave a final swipe over Jack's hand with a new wet wipe. She laid the hand down on the armrest when she was finished, giving it a light pat. 

He watched her shift sideways on her knees, moving to the other side in complete silence. She pulled out another wipe and restarted the process of cleaning the blood from his hands, not saying a word, focusing all of her attention on each stroke of the wipe and nothing else.

Jack stared at the scarlet mess of his hand. 

An hour ago, that blood had been inside Ianto. 

He figured it would be a long while before he closed his eyes and didn't see himself in the SUV again, sitting in the backseat with Ianto in his lap, pressing his hands over Ianto's chest, screaming at Gwen to drive faster. Either that, or the look in Ianto's eyes for as long as he remained conscious—a mixture of fear and worry. Fear for himself and worry for Jack. Or fear for Jack and worry for himself. Jack didn't like either option particularly much. No matter which case it was, the look would haunt him forever. So would the ashen grey look of Ianto's face after he slipped out of consciousness. Jack didn't exactly remember anything that happened from that point onward, but he was fairly certain he may have yelled at Ianto not to leave him. Or begged. Or screamed. Or pleaded. Something. Anything.

"Oh, bollocks," Gwen breathed.

Jack tore his eyes away from his hand, glancing up at her. She didn't look at him, evidently unaware she'd sworn loud enough for him. He observed distantly as she sniffed and composed herself. She gave herself a moment, then shook herself and returned to her work. He said nothing about the tears on her cheeks. She hadn't said anything about the ones on his.

When she finished, Gwen wiped her own bloodied hands with a fresh wipe. It was strange, how fast something so pristine could stain red, Jack mused. Like Jack's shirt and trousers. Or Ianto's. Those were likely cut away, though, he supposed. The entire suit was rubbish now. The only thing they had was his coat. Jack had it in his lap. 

Gwen gathered up the used and dirtied wipes, standing and disappearing to dispose of them. Jack's heart instantly leapt into motion the moment she disappeared from view. God, what if a doctor or a nurse came out when she was away? He didn't want to hear the news alone. He didn't want to _be_ alone. For so long, Jack had been alone, and now he was terrified of the thought. He _couldn't_ be alone anymore. 

Just as his heart started racing at the sound of footsteps down the hall, Gwen returned. His breath _wooshed_ out of his lips and she looked at him, brows furrowed as she checked to see if he was alright. When the footsteps revealed themselves to belong to another unfortunate hospital guest returning from their visit, Jack relaxed, which seemed to pacify Gwen.

She took the seat beside him. They sat still for a moment, but then Gwen's hand made a movement to Jack. It was aborted instantly, but Jack could see her restless fingers. He reached out and took the hand, placing it on Ianto's coat in his lap. Gwen's fingers instantly curled around the fabric. Jack encased his hand around hers. She rested her head against his shoulder, and he likewise placed his cheek against her head. 

Jack was generally rather good with time (which had been why he'd become a Time Agent in that darker time of his life), but right now time eluded him. Didn't make sense. So he had no idea how long they waited there before Gwen's pocket buzzed.

She sniffed, extracting herself from Jack as she sat up straight and fished out her mobile.

"Rhys?" she mumbled into the mobile when she picked up.

Jack heard the vague sounds of Rhys Williams from the other end of the call. He didn't bother trying to make out the words. 

"No," Gwen said next. "I dunno when—"

She cut off abruptly, swiping the back of her jacket sleeve over her eyes. Then her hand dropped again, and her fingers unconsciously sought out and buried themselves in Ianto's coat.

"No," she repeated after a long silence from both sides of the conversation. "But I think... soon, yeah?"

Her disjointed words didn't make much sense, but Jack knew what she was talking about. Rhys said something seemingly comforting on the other end of the line.

"Yeah," she said to Rhys. "I lo—"

She stopped short again.

"I'll call you in a bit, alright?"

Jack didn't know what to make of this amendment, but he was grateful for it either way when she hung up after it.

Her head returned to Jack's shoulder, and the two of them returned to drifting on the edge of time and existence.

Sometime later, footsteps came from the hall again, and this time, they belonged to someone in hospital scrubs. Gwen popped up straight automatically, and Jack followed suit, but his heart felt like it had stopped in his chest and his limbs felt loose and puppet-like. He tried reading the face of the man in front of them, but each time he landed on an expression the man might have, the name of the emotion fluttered away from Jack.

After what felt like an eternity and a half, the man told them both, "Mister Jones is going to be okay."

Gwen immediately melted with relief, but Jack only sat up straighter.

"He's in recovery right now," the man said. "He's still out, but it should be alright for you two to visit. You said you're his—"

"I'm his sister and he's his partner," Gwen lied instantly, pointing between herself and Jack. "We're family."

It was unnecessary of Gwen, but stopped Jack from using his usual "we're Torchwood" excuse, which for once, Jack was thankful for. It didn't fit here. 

The man smiled placidly, almost like it didn't matter what they were to Ianto. Jack hated that. But the man did lead them to Ianto's room without further questioning, so maybe Jack couldn't be too upset.

Jack couldn't make it more than two steps past the door frame when they entered the room.

There lie Ianto, in a hospital bed, surrounded by tubes and wires and blankets and pillows. Jack couldn't believe how washed-out all the white made Ianto look. He couldn't believe how _frail_ it all made Ianto look. That terrified Jack. And what especially terrified Jack were the things that bleeped all around Ianto. The wires and tubes that seemed to connect to every visible part of him were certainly daunting and worthy of a horrifying note, but... the monitors were what said that Ianto was alive. Every little blip and every little beep said that currently, Ianto Jones lived, and it was Jack's fear that suddenly those blips and beeps would stop short. 

A hand gently rubbed his arm. He glanced down to see Gwen looking back up at him.

"C'mon," she whispered. 

She led Jack over to Ianto. She steered a seat next to Ianto's bed, took Ianto's coat from Jack, and draped it over the back of the chair. Then she practically sat Jack down in the chair. She dragged another to the other side of the bed and sat herself, opposite of Jack. She gave a forced calming smile to Jack, but Jack was no longer paying attention to her. All he could think about was the man in the bed beside him.

Ianto's left hand rested on the bed right in front of Jack. Jack reached his own hand out and slipped it under, holding it loosely. He studied Ianto's face. He still looked pale from this angle, too. Jack worried about the amount of blood in Ianto. Did they replace enough? 

Across the bed, Gwen reached up to unfold a section of top of the blanket that had accidentally tucked under. Then she gently smoothed it across Ianto's chest. She looked ready to cry again. Jack couldn't blame her. 

He stroked his thumb across Ianto's knuckles, mindful of the IV. 

The hand in Jack's squeezed his. 

It wasn't much of a squeeze—it was certainly limp and weak, and it relaxed almost instantly—but it was enough for Jack's heart to flip over in his chest. He squeezed back, as gently as possible, and Ianto's hand returned that as much as it could, this time keeping the pressure. 

Jack looked up at Ianto to find two blue eyes studying him under heavily-lidded eyes. Jack stood, mindfully not releasing Ianto's hand, and bent over Ianto to press a kiss to his forehead. 

"Oh, thank god," Gwen sighed in relief when Jack sat back down.

Her hand smoothed over Ianto's shoulder, and his eyes turned to her. His eyebrows raised, just barely, and Gwen smiled a watery smile at him in return. 

Ianto wasn't ready to stay in the world of the awake just yet, because his eyelids slipped back shut again, and his grip on Jack's hand loosened itself completely. Jack brought Ianto's hand up to his lips to kiss the knuckles, then placed it back on the bed. 

Gwen sniffed and Jack looked over to her. Tears were cascading down her cheeks, but she kept smiling through them. Jack wasn't ready to smile just yet, so he reached over Ianto's legs, across the bed to Gwen. Gwen placed her hand in his free one, and Jack held the hands of two important people. 

He couldn't be on this planet alone. He needed friends like Gwen. He needed Ianto. And right now, he was very glad that both of them were with him, even just for this moment. 

**Author's Note:**

> Gwen needs friends to take care of. Jack needs to not be alone. Thus, this fic.  
> Thank you for reading! Have a beautiful day!


End file.
